The internet has changed how people access and view pornography. With endless content available at any time, many are asking the same question: What are the effects of pornography on the brain?

Research into how porn affects the brain is still growing, but early findings show real concerns. ¹ Regular porn use can cause mental and sexual health issues, including depression and erectile dysfunction (ED). Some studies suggest a link between higher porn use and the rising rates of these conditions in men. ²

Porn also strongly affects brain plasticity (the brain’s ability to adapt based on repeated behavior). ³ Since porn is easy to access and highly stimulating, the brain quickly responds to it, forming new habits and patterns that may be hard to break.

Porn as an Addiction

There’s been several obvious consequences to long-term pornography exposure, such as ED and other sexual dsyfunctions. However, porn also compromises relationship quality and commitment with sexual partners.

To understand these effects, porn must be seen as a type of addiction. When you witness any type of sexual stimuli, the brain is flooded with dopamine. ⁴ While this neurotransmitter is known for reward anticipation, it also plays a role in encoding memories and information in the brain. ⁵

What this means is when the body needs something (i.e. sex), the brain recalls the source of experience to receive the same pleasure. Therefore, when porn addiction unfolds, the brain will naturally associate sexual gratification with pornography rather than a romantic partner.

Porn leaves the brain with an unnatural level of reward and pleasure. This can result in extreme habituations in the brain. As psychiatrist Norman Doidge explains:

“Pornography satisfies every one of the prerequisites for neuroplastic changes. When pornographers boast that they are pushing the envelope by introducing new, harder themes, what they don’t say is that they must, because their customers are building up a tolerance to the content.”

Just as we see in a substance use disorder, porn imagery is hyper-stimulating and leads to excessively high levels of dopamine release. ⁶ Such hyper-stimulation can damage our brain’s reward system and make it unable to naturally source dopamine.

How Porn May Impair Human Behavior

While damage to our reward circuitry may lead to sexual dysfunctions, the consequences of porn addiction don’t stop there. Research reveals that such changes can also lead to the development of mental disorders, such as anxiety and depression. ⁷

Compared to those who don’t watch pornography, porn addicts report: ⁸

• Higher levels of depressive symptoms
• Lower quality of life
• Poorer mental health
• Reduced self-esteem

One study found that increased porn use results in diminished brain activation in response to traditional sexual imagery. ⁹ This is the reason many users feel the need to move up to more extreme and unconventional porn imagery for stimulation.

With that, analytics have found an increase in porn searches concerning incest and violence. While research hasn’t found a direct correlation yet, it’s possible that real-life instances of sexual violence may also increase.

This correlation has to do with neurons. These brain cells activate when you perform an action or watch someone perform an action.

When you watch porn, you activate the same regions of the brain that trigger during sex. According to Marco Lacoboni, a psychiatry professor at the University of California, los Angeles, violent porn scenes may spread to real-life violent behaviors. ¹⁰

“The mirror mechanism in the brain also suggests that we are automatically influenced by what we perceive, thus proposing a plausible neurobiological mechanism for contagion of violent behavior.”

Porn’s Effects on Ethical Growth

Pornography use can also deteriorate the prefrontal cortex. This area of the brain is responsible for several executive functions, which include the following: ¹¹

• Impulse regulation
• Morality
• Self-control

An underdeveloped prefrontal cortex is common throughout childhood, which is why children have difficulty controlling their emotions and impulses.

However, as an adult, damage to the prefrontal cortex can lead to compulsivity behaviors and poor decision-making processes. This is known as hypofrontality. ¹² Therefore, it can be argued that compulsive pornography use rewires the brain to a more immature state.

Final Word

Porn addiction can have very serious consequences to brain structure, especially through long-term exposure. If you struggle with this addiction and want to stop, we invite you to check out our article on “How to Quit Porn.”

References

¹ Kühn S, Gallinat J. Brain structure and functional connectivity associated with pornography consumption: the brain on porn. JAMA Psychiatry. 2014 Jul 1;71(7):827-34. doi: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2014.93. PMID: 24871202.

² Park BY, Wilson G, Berger J, Christman M, Reina B, Bishop F, Klam WP, Doan AP. Is Internet Pornography Causing Sexual Dysfunctions? A Review with Clinical Reports. Behav Sci (Basel). 2016 Aug 5;6(3):17. doi: 10.3390/bs6030017. Erratum in: Behav Sci (Basel). 2018 Jun 01;8(6):E55. doi: 10.3390/bs8060055. PMID: 27527226; PMCID: PMC5039517.

³ Mateos-Aparicio P, Rodríguez-Moreno A. The Impact of Studying Brain Plasticity. Front Cell Neurosci. 2019 Feb 27;13:66. doi: 10.3389/fncel.2019.00066. PMID: 30873009; PMCID: PMC6400842.

⁴ Love T, Laier C, Brand M, Hatch L, Hajela R. Neuroscience of Internet Pornography Addiction: A Review and Update. Behav Sci (Basel). 2015 Sep 18;5(3):388-433. doi: 10.3390/bs5030388. PMID: 26393658; PMCID: PMC4600144.

⁵ Clos M, Bunzeck N, Sommer T. Dopamine is a double-edged sword: dopaminergic modulation enhances memory retrieval performance but impairs metacognition. Neuropsychopharmacology. 2019 Feb;44(3):555-563. doi: 10.1038/s41386-018-0246-y. Epub 2018 Oct 25. PMID: 30356095; PMCID: PMC6333779.

⁶ Koob GF, Volkow ND. Neurobiology of addiction: a neurocircuitry analysis. Lancet Psychiatry. 2016 Aug;3(8):760-773. doi: 10.1016/S2215-0366(16)00104-8. PMID: 27475769; PMCID: PMC6135092.

⁷ Avgustinovich DF, Alekseenko OV, Bakshtanovskaia IV, Koriakina LA, Lipina TV, Tenditnik MV, Bondar’ NP, Kovalenko IL, Kudriavtseva NN. Dinamicheskue izmeneniia serotonergicheskoĭ i dofaminergicheskoĭ aktivnosti mozga v protsesse razvitiia trevozhnoĭ depressii: éksperimental’noe issledovanie [Dynamic changes of brain serotonergic and dopaminergic activities during development of anxious depression: experimental study]. Usp Fiziol Nauk. 2004 Oct-Dec;35(4):19-40. Russian. PMID: 15573884.

⁸ Weaver JB 3rd, Weaver SS, Mays D, Hopkins GL, Kannenberg W, McBride D. Mental- and physical-health indicators and sexually explicit media use behavior by adults. J Sex Med. 2011 Mar;8(3):764-72. doi: 10.1111/j.1743-6109.2010.02030.x. Epub 2010 Oct 4. PMID: 20946159.

⁹ Kühn S, Gallinat J. Brain structure and functional connectivity associated with pornography consumption: the brain on porn. JAMA Psychiatry. 2014 Jul 1;71(7):827-34. doi: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2014.93. PMID: 24871202.

¹⁰ Forum on Global Violence Prevention; Board on Global Health; Institute of Medicine; National Research Council. Contagion of Violence: Workshop Summary. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2013 Feb 6. II.5, THE POTENTIAL ROLE OF MIRROR NEURONS IN THE CONTAGION OF VIOLENCE. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207238/

¹¹ Hilton DL, Watts C. Pornography addiction: A neuroscience perspective. Surg Neurol Int. 2011 Feb 21;2:19. doi: 10.4103/2152-7806.76977. PMID: 21427788; PMCID: PMC3050060.

¹² de Alarcón R, de la Iglesia JI, Casado NM, Montejo AL. Online Porn Addiction: What We Know and What We Don’t-A Systematic Review. J Clin Med. 2019 Jan 15;8(1):91. doi: 10.3390/jcm8010091. PMID: 30650522; PMCID: PMC6352245.